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Why You Should Leave Norton Security Products on the Shelf
Author: Eldon Martin
Updated:  01-05-06

Symantec's Norton series of products enjoy a history of success.  For years they have been considered the leader in virus removal and security products.  From a sales standpoint, they probably still are.  Even here at Great Cove Technologies, we've recommended Norton AntiVirus to customers as recently as 2004.

We won't be doing so again anytime soon.  Since the release of the 2005 versions of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Internet Security, we've heard nothing but complaints.

For starters, Norton AntiVirus puts a tremendous load on the resources of your computer, causing it to run much slower.  Even a brand new computer will run noticeably slower with Norton AntiVirus.  Although any anti-virus software will have some negative impact on your computer's speed, Norton is slower than most competing products.

An even worse problem occurs if Norton AntiVirus is installed on a Windows 98 or Windows ME computer.  Users have reported lock-ups, “out of memory” errors, and “low on system resources” errors.  So far, we haven't seen a fix from Symantec that addresses these problems. Because of this, Windows 98 users who encounter these problems have little choice but to uninstall their Norton product and look elsewhere for virus protection.

A worthy anti-virus program to consider is AVG, a product from a reputable European company known as Grisoft.  We've been using it here for over two years, and we found that it cleans viruses better that Norton, with less of an impact on speed.  Better yet, the home-user edition can be obtained free of charge at free.grisoft.com.  If you use your computer for business, you should buy the professional edition, which is a bargain at $38.95 for two years.  That version can be obtained from www.grisoft.com.

As of December 2005, we no longer will provide support for the installation of Norton consumer security products.  For more information, please visit www.greatcove.com/docs/symantecpolicy.html.

 

Copyright(c) 2005 by Eldon Martin